Document processors have evolved from a class of computer applications known as word processors and have the unique ability to control the relative position of text and graphic objects on printed pages. Document processors, also referred to as page layout processors, allow free placement of text and graphic objects to produce documents having text and graphics arranged in a variety of column and row formats.
In current document and page layout processors, text and graphic areas may be thought of as areas bounded by "layout rectangles" wherein text and graphic objects within the layout rectangles share common attributes and are treated as one object. Current document or page layout processors require the user to manually define layout rectangles and manually position them within a document. Therefore, while current document processors provide a degree of flexibility unknown in prior systems, they require a significant amount of user interaction to achieve a desired result.
Still another disadvantage of current document processors are the restrictions they place on the placement of text and graphics within the same document. For example, many document processors only permit text be placed on one side of a graphic image. Still other document processors do not permit text to flow from one side of a graphic image to another.
Since the various text and graphic areas are manually placed in a document with the above-mentioned and other restrictions in current document processors, the page layout process can be time consuming and may result with many unused portions of a page.
From the foregoing, no document processing system is known which allows for free placement of fixed text and graphic objects in a document while also providing for the automatic placement of free text and graphic objects in areas surrounding the fixed text and graphic objects while maximizing the amount of page area available to a user.